A chorus of anti-French bile over the failure to reach agreement in Geneva appeared to have the endorsement of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, with a Twiiter account run in his name and believed to have his approval leading the charge.

“French officials have been openly hostile towards the Iranian nation over the past few years; this is an imprudent and inept move,” one tweet posted on the account @khamenei.ir read.

A second message, accompanied by a #France hashtag, declared: “A wise man, particularly a wise politician, should never have the motivation to turn a neutral entity into an enemy.”…

Fars fell in with the prevailing anti-French sentiment in a commentary headlined “Difficult negotiations in Geneva and the gun-slinging French frog”. In strident tones, the commentary accused France of looking “like a frog that drew its gun to give it the feeling of being all-powerful”.